


More than Bittersweet Tragedy

by KurenaiCakes



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 19:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8222498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KurenaiCakes/pseuds/KurenaiCakes
Summary: This is the story of Tony Stark. He’s not perfect, and neither is his life. But he’s a good man, the best one that he can be given the circumstances.  (Inspired by Melanie Martinez Crybaby Deluxe Album)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I got bored while listening to Melanie Martinez’s Crybaby Deluxe Album. The story follows the Album with the 3 dots separating the story up by song. There is an extra song by her used for the final line. It’s her song “Dead to Me.”  
> The title is taken from one of her songs also, though I may change it.  
> I’m not claiming to be a whiz on Marvel Comics or Movies, so some stuff is made up or may not be chronologically correct.  
> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything.  
> ~Kurenai Cakes

On May 29, 1970, a beautiful little boy was born to Howard and Maria Stark. His was named Anthony Edward Stark. For Mr. Stark, he was an heir, a creation that would grow to help the Stark line become a legacy. For Mrs. Stark, the baby was a treasure, her heart, the best thing that could have happened to her. Jarvis and Ana thought so too.

In Howard’s eyes the child had one fatal flaw, he cried a lot. He was too soft, such a crybaby.

In Maria’s eyes, her husband was the one with the flaw. Her son was beautiful, and when he cried, all he wanted was to be held. Anthony grew and so did his heart. He was her sensitive little boy, all smiles and giggles. He would still cry and she would still hold him. Jarvis and Ana did too.

Howard still hated when his son cried, but by the time he was five, Anthony realized that he and his dad would never be best friends like how Anthony was with his mother, Jarvis and Ana. Also, Anthony saw how hard Howard looked for Captain America. The man would miss birthdays, dinners, and holidays. When he would come back, Tony would cry out of sheer joy for seeing him, and all he would get in return was “Anthony, don’t be such a crybaby. Stark men are made of Iron.”

The was Howard spat his name made him feel so hollow. So Anthony decided that he hated the name Anthony and he wanted to be known as Tony. Also, he realized that crybaby wasn’t the worst thing to be called. Howard had said that he wasn’t a crybaby, but the man was as icy as the Arctic where he searched for the Captain. And if that’s what Iron was like, maybe Tony would rather be a crybaby.

**.**

**.**

**.**

Appearances always were supposed to be kept up. Cameras entered the Stark Household more often than not, especially when it was discovered that Tony was a genius. And that was something to be bragged about when Howard was involved. The man would make his wife and child smile for pictures while they both cringed inside. Tony hated being fake. He hated pretending that all the bruises that were under his shirt were from him making things. He hated pretending that his dad, Howard, wasn’t a miserable son of a bitch who cursed and drank and screamed and hit.

He hated that he had to see Maria pretend to be happy when she hated the house. She loved both her husband and her child. But she tolerated one, while completely adoring the other. Guess which one was which. But they knew that Howard wanted a legacy. So they had to get into their places, places. They had to smile for so many pictures, while all the onlookers believe they were perfect. A perfect family.

**.**

**.**

**.**

Tony was depressed even when he was dressed up. He enjoyed jeans and shirts, but he was forced to wears suits and ties. He complained to his mother, Jarvis and Ana but they just told him it was better than to argue with Howard. Tony just went along with it, pretending as always. But one day, his father takes him test one of his products. It’s a bomb and they test it in a field. The crater that comes from it makes Tony realize that his father creates weapons of mass destruction, and that all their money is blood money.

There came a time when Maria couldn’t pretend anymore. It was when she was pregnant with the second Stark heir. Tony remembers waking up one morning to her screaming at Howard, something about him fucking some whore or something. Following the sound of her voice, he found them in their room with the door cracked open. He saw his father rise from the bed, standing in front of her. He screams and she cries. Tony finds himself pushing open the door and standing in between his parents—when his father yelled that loud, it always meant that pain would soon come and he didn’t want his mom to feel any pain. But apparently it was too late. His mother tells him to go back to bed, tells him everything’s okay. She’s lying though and soon he hears some sort of water hit the ground. Turning away from his dad, he sees that red is running down her legs. They go to the hospital as the Starks—one mother, one father, one child and a baby on the way. They leave only as a mother, father and one child.

His father adopts a bigger sippy cup, one that is always filled to the brim with liquor. Maria takes to crying a lot. Eventually, his father sends him to boarding school at the age of ten. Mama doesn’t say anything; she just takes the pills to make her stop being sad.

**.**

**.**

**.**

His first crush is on his teacher, Mrs. Mathews. She had taken him under her wing. He was a ten-year-old in ninth grade, and he’s had no friends since fourteen year olds had no time for “babies” like him. His heart was open for any affection, especially since he was so far from home.  For Valentine’s day, he bought her cotton candy. She said thank you and told him that her husband loved cotton candy. As soon as the word husband left her mouth, his heart was crushed. He didn’t give her the Valentine that asked her to be his date to the school hosted Carnival because he wanted to get on the carousel with her. Instead, he went to the bathroom, ripped up the piece of paper, and flushed it down the toilet. He went to the carnival and got on the carousel by himself. He rode it until he puked.

**.**

**.**

**.**

Eventually he met Tiberius Stone. It was a good friendship at first until he learned that the older boy was a jackass that just hung out with him to make himself look better. The boy thought he was smarter than Tony. Ha, laughable when the only reason he passed his classes was that Tony helped him. Their friendship was stupid. It’s funny when people try to teach you the alphabet when they barely know it themselves.  So when Tony wised up, he walks away from the blond boy with a big Fuck You Asshole.

**.**

**.**

**.**

When he goes to MIT at the age of fifteen, the last thing he expects to encounter is James Rhodes, Rhodey. The older boy is the first person in a long time outside of Maria, Jarvis and Ana that accept and care for him as he is. The boy saves him when he goes to parties and gets in way over his head. He makes Tony stop his inventing binges long enough to eat. Rhodey quickly becomes Tony’s best friend. And Tony agonizes over how to tell the older boy, his brother that he loves him.  He finally chokes it out one night when he has too much to drink, and the next day Tony wants oh-so-desperately to wash his mouth out with soap. Rhodey won’t let him though, and they hug it out.

That why it breaks his heart when Rhodey says he’s going to the military.

**.**

**.**

**.**

Sex is like riding a bike, the training wheels come off and you get on the bike again and again. Tony’s been with so many girls he loses count. It’s nice to fall asleep next to someone. But he just wishes they would stay, but he’s never that lucky. So sometimes when he’s alone, he dreams that he was normal with someone who would call him out for the stupid shit he does. (sure Rhodey does it, but he was more than friendship with someone. He wants to fall in love again.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

He loses it when parents die. The liquor and drugs become his safe haven. His life becomes a never ending pity party. He laughs. He cries. It always feels like he is dying. He laughs. He cries. It always feels like he is dying.

But it’s okay, it’s his party and he can be dumb if he wants to.

He becomes the brunt of the world’s jokes.

He follows in his father’s footsteps and tries to live up to the legacy his father wanted to create. Tony, against his better judgment stains his hands with blood—he continues to run Stark Industries as a weapons manufacturer. He’s always crying on the inside, but he perfected his living doll persona. He smiles for the cameras, while giving them something to talk about.

There is some good in the bad though, he meets Pepper Potts and hires her as his PA.

**.**

**.**

**.**

When he’s kidnapped by the Ten Rings, it’s like they were playing a game of tag that he didn’t know about. But the “Tag you’re it” is implied when he wakes up in a dark cave. He tries to reason. They don’t want ransoms. They are creative in their methods to get him to do what they want. They take the words from his mouth; he screams himself raw but no one hears him from the cave. He holds out though. He scratches and bites, reveling in the taste of their skin beneath his teeth. He’s happy that he hurts them a little. They redouble their efforts and they become twice as effective. He hates water; he doesn’t think he’ll ever take a bath again. Eventually, they start to get to him a little. He is sick of screaming, but he’s trying to hold out. He doesn’t really know how long he can hold out with a car battery strapped to his chest. But he does with Yinsen by his side.

**.**

**.**

**.**

 

 They build a way for them to get out. It’s a metal suit.  On the way out some of the Ten Rings die at his hand. The metaphorical blood on his hands becomes real, though he so out of his mind with satisfaction at them burning for all the pain they caused him.  Yinsen doesn’t get to live to tell the tale of their victory. Without him, it’s hollow.

 He goes back home and rewrites the Stark legacy by shutting down the weapons manufacturing. He builds another suit, covering himself in Iron, and goes out to right the grievous wrongs that had been caused by his designs. Obadiah, his godfather eventually reveals his dastardly hand, so Tony is forced to kill him with fire. It’s like a sad lullaby: “ashes, ashes they all fall down”

**.**

**.**

**.**

At the end of it all SHIELD tries to get him to hide, but Tony’s done with the hiding from his mistakes. If the media wants him, they’ll want him as he is.

“I am Iron Man” is what he says.

SHIELD tests him again with Natalie Rushman—Natasha Romanov, and they exclude him from some kind of club because he acted out because he was dying. But the funny thing is, he was just pacifying them. They wanted self- destruction, and he gave it to them.

**.**

**.**

**.**

He looks down at the thing in his chest. The Arc Reactor. He’s had it for a while. He’s used to it being there, but it’s sometimes hard to look at. Pepper doesn’t really know how to touch hm when his shirt is off, but she tries to pretend. He’s okay with that. He’s though about creating some kind of artificial skin to hide it. But he doesn’t want to become _that_ guy. He doesn’t want to become Mr. Potato head. Besides the night light in his chest was the core for Iron Man, and that was enough to make her not stay forever. She had constantly said she didn’t want him to be Iron Man.

**.**

**.**

**.**

Eventually SHIELD needs him when there is an alien invasion. The Avengers come into existence and they do some crazy shit. Tony argues with the god of Thunder and meets his childhood hero/ his father’s golden boy Captain America. He sees the Hulk in action. He meets the Hawkeye guy, and sees Natasha-lie in action in a black cat suit. They doubted him and in completely mad hatter style, he does something crazy heroic. He flies a missile into a portal. The rabbit hole imagery probably comes into place, but there was no way he was Alice. That was totally Captain America in the twenty first century.

**.**

**.**

**.**

He and Bruce have playdates after the shit that goes down with the Mandarin and AIM. It’s nice to have a science bro, an intellectual to have a bromance with.

He plays nice with Steve, though the asshole isn’t as bad as he was at first.

Natasha-lie and Clint aren’t that bad. They have movie nights when they stay in the Tower in between the missions that Fury, who should’ve played dead a little longer, assigns.

Ultron is a disaster that they blame him for. But no one seems to remember that Ultron was the brain child of him and Bruce, not to mention that Miss Maximoff had a hand in creating the being with her twisted mind games. Vision is created, though, so that’s a win. They save the day. But Wanda’s brother dies. JARVIS does too, but he is only mourned when Rhodey and Tony get drunk together when the other is on leave.

Bruce leaves.

Tony decides to convert a warehouse to the new Avengers home base. Natasha and Steve carry on with the new recruits.

Clint is finally at home with the tiny agents and his wife.

Thor is off world again.

Playdates were over. He wanted to say he didn’t give a fuck about them, but he loved those idiots.

**.**

**.**

**.**

The Sokovia Accords draw a line in the sand. But Tony tries to make the best of it. He keeps Ross from going through with shooting Rogers and his team. They fight in an airport, and Rhodey gets paralyzed. Even after all of that, Tony gone to help him and Bucky.

Steve had been a teddy bear. Tony had owned a Captain Ameribear as a child, and to know that the man had done this to him— lied to him about his parents’ murder and almost killed him hurt more than if should have. Tony wished he would die of the cold  on the icy Siberian floor.

But he doesn’t. Somehow he makes it back.

**.**

**.**

**.**

The letter he gets a while later pisses him off. Tony rips it to shreds and uses the blow touch on the sad piece of phone that the idiot though would help him hide. Wakanda. Tony knew where they were, but he was done.

All the time he’d put into being friends with that pigheaded son of a bitch only got him lied to and a lousy letter. Steve and the Avengers who decided to defect and turn on him without even allowing him and his legal team to amend the Accords could suck his dick, especially Rogers, Clint—who’s family now resided with Tony in the Compound, and Natasha-lie.

From now on, it was just him, Rhodey, and Vision. And Spider-baby when he gets old enough to vote.

He wasn’t a piece of cake, something to discard after being used. He wasn’t sweet; he was vindictive.

They’re at a press conference and the reports ask about the defected Avengers. Rising to the podium, Tony Stark stands and says, “Respectfully, I don’t give a damn about the defected ‘Avengers’” yeah, he used air quotations. “Vision, War Machine, and I, Iron Man, care about us listening to the people who fear us. We do not set out to cause destruction when we help. I understand that our previous method did not go over well.  I apologize. We are not like Mr. Rogers and his Cohorts; we do not pretend that we are perfect or that we know what’s best for every country in the world. The three of us hope that by listening to the people we can amend the Accords to benefit both the people and the world.”

He turns toward the reports and smiles, “Does that answer your question, miss? “

She nods, and he hopes down from the podium.

He wasn’t sweet; he was vindictive.

He was done pretending like he did when he was younger. He was done having private pity parties.

**.**

**.**

**.**

Steve Rogers was dead to him.

And the rest of them could go to hell.

**Author's Note:**

> This probably sucks, but on the off chance that it doesn’t…Tell Me What You Think.  
> ~Kurenai Cakes


End file.
